quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Buy a shredder. Shred what you have. Then keep using it to shred everything that going forward.

That's what I do. Ours is at least 25 years old and is used once a month for that month's sensitive stuff.

I recently spent $300 on a Fellows cross cut shredder. It will handle 20 sheets at a time, and doesn’t give a crap about staples or paper clips. But I don’t try to do 20 sheets with paper clips. I highly recommend it.

On the other hand, it sounds like some of y’all are shredding much more than necessary. I see no reason to shred old bank statements for closed accounts, bills, etc., UNLESS they contain social security numbers. Of course some older documents had social security numbers on them- much less these days.

Lastly, just mixing them in with your home garbage is probably satisfactory. At least where I live, nobody is opening my garbage bags and digging through stinky garbage. And I don’t think they’re doing it at the land fill either. I could be wrong.

I burn all my documents every winter outside. I cut up some wire fencing to create a cover to prevent the lit documents from lifting out of the firepit. A little used motor oil helps things along as well.

quote:

Originally posted by honestlou:
I recently spent $300 on a Fellows cross cut shredder. It will handle 20 sheets at a time, and doesn’t give a crap about staples or paper clips. But I don’t try to do 20 sheets with paper clips. I highly recommend it.

On the other hand, it sounds like some of y’all are shredding much more than necessary. I see no reason to shred old bank statements for closed accounts, bills, etc., UNLESS they contain social security numbers. Of course some older documents had social security numbers on them- much less these days.

Lastly, just mixing them in with your home garbage is probably satisfactory. At least where I live, nobody is opening my garbage bags and digging through stinky garbage. And I don’t think they’re doing it at the land fill either. I could be wrong.

I like to create good habits and procedures. In my household, mail gets separated on the way in. As I walk past the recycling bin, I toss everything that doesn't have my name on it into the recycling. Once inside, I open every piece of mail that has my name on it and either immediately shred it or set it into a basket to be scanned. All my bills or banking are handled electronically, so few things make it past the shredder.

You related to Felix Ungar??

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Buy a shredder. Shred what you have. Then keep using it to shred everything that going forward.

We have one but unless you get a HD Pro model it takes a LOT of time and space for the shredding's.
We even borrowed a friends big Pro version and it was much better but alas he sold it.
So it is much better for us to take to a shredding place - it wasn't a terrible lot of money and a much easier process.
YMMV

Try the Shredd-It company if one is local. The shredder is huge and you can watch. If you take the documents to FedEx, UPS, etc those storefronts are just drop-offs and you are over-paying.

I sometimes shredded my own stuff but the junk mail, bank statements, etc took hours to shred.

I with the camp that says buy a shredder. Get a good one which will run $100+ and you'll have it to use after you dispose of the current lot. Ours will handle quite a few sheets at a time... around 20 and no need to remove staples, they get eaten too along with credit cards and CDs.

I found out though, our recycle service does not want shreddings, so this unfortunately has to go to the landfill.

My wife and I shred anything with any identification; numbers, names, addresses, personal data of any kind, legal documents. Everything. We shred it ourselves, burn the shredded material, and stir the ashes. Sometimes we don't bother with the shredding, depending on how much material there is to destroy. When done, there's nothing to put back together, especially after the stirred ash is soaked, and disposed.

quote:

Originally posted by mr kablammo:

I sometimes shredded my own stuff but the junk mail, bank statements, etc took hours to shred.

You receive so much mail daily that shredding it takes hours?

quote:

Originally posted by 2PAK:
As I dip my toe into the retirement pool, I'm going though old files and boxes and throwing out documents accumulated. I'd like to have some of these documents shredded. I'll probably end up with about two boxes for the shredder.

Two boxes? That's all? I'd buy a decent cross-cut shredder and shred them myself.

We've had a Fellows cross-cut shredder for years and years. Every document we don't keep that's the least bit sensitive gets shredded. All address labels get removed and shredded.

The only thing is we found out the hard way you can't feed the thing address label sections of shipping envelopes with built-in bubble wrap. The soft, thin plastic of that bubble wrap fouls in the shredder blades something fierce. Those have to be hand-shredded with a pair of scissors. PITA.

OfficeMax.

Use this one in my office, bought it back in 2014, runs good, holds 100 pages at a time, self feeds, good size shred bin. Use it monthly to clean up company and some personal documents, credit cards, mail etc. Gets about 500 to 1000 plus pages a month easy.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod..._title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

quote:

Originally posted by Powers77:

quote:

Originally posted by thumperfbc:
Why not spend $35 on a personal cross-cut shredder?

When there is a build up it can be really labor intensive. My last experience at retirement changed my front end process greatly. Went digital where possible and very selective on the paper records we keep. Even then it's easy for it to get out of hand.

That "very selective" is important when you look at what gets mailed. Half the insurance/medical is required postings - that stuff is garbage, no personal ID etc and can get tossed while reading it.

I say that because I'm in the middle of shredding the previous year with a $10 flea market home unit. I sort out what is personal first - throw the other in either the fire starter bin or the trash - and stack the ID'd for shredding.

Lets not forget a lot of that is the top of the page - tear off the other and trash it.

There is also the option of only downloading what you need from statements, .Gov payroll, etc which reduces the paper load significantly. And when the bank statement gets reconciled, any non deductible receipt not warranty marked is tossed then, not two years later.

A lot of this paper can be eliminated the very first time you handle it, something a military efficiency class taught me. They even suggested scrawling an answer by hand on the paper you got and handing it right back to the issuer. That works well in an office setting and is much quicker than going thru hundreds of useless emails by coworkers who are just CTA.

Kill the paper flow, segregate, and then your load is much reduced.

quote:

Originally posted by NavyGuy:

our recycle service does not want shreddings

Our recycle stuff is collected weekly by the city's Public Works department. Shredded paper is on their no-go list.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by NavyGuy:
our recycle service does not want shreddings

Our recycle stuff is collected weekly by the city's Public Works department. Shredded paper is on their no-go list.

Same here.

Our shredder output goes into a plastic garbage bag. When that gets full it gets tied-off and dropped in the garbage bin.

quote:

Originally posted by NK402:

OfficeMax.

Ain't none.

Get the Oliver North shredder.

I ended up with 9 boxes to shred. The Shredding truck came to my house. I watched him shred everything on the spot. $125. Not cheap but effective and done considering I had several boxes of documents that I needed to observe being shredded and couldnt simply drop off. The price of gas has probably increased the fees as well.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It is the only way to go. I had 40 bankers boxes. I value my time. I dont have friends with burn pits at present.